Do not preselect paid or high-consequence options
Aliases: prechecked purchase · dark default · costly default
What it is
A default that points at paying, giving up a right, or a hard-to-reverse act is no longer saving effort; it turns consent into inaction. A high-consequence default includes a pre-ticked paid add-on, a preselected annual plan, pre-enabled data sharing, a preselected “delete forever.” People scanning an already-lit item treat it as a neutral starting point; the consequence has already taken the vendor’s or the system’s side without a confirming click. When no default is safe, leave empty; when one is, safety must sit on the cheap, reversible, free end.
Why it happens
Default bias grows when consequences are asymmetric: the cost of inaction feels near zero, while acting (unticking, switching to monthly) feels like a decision. The expensive choice then bypasses decision by already being lit. Paid items often sit beside a smaller free item; visual weight lands on the selected larger one, and free looks like an accessory. If the submit label says only “Continue” and not “you will be billed yearly,” default and action copy conspire to wipe the consequence out of the sentence.
Law and store review look at this structure too: whether a preselected pay or share is unfair. Interaction need not wait for review; the structure is already signing for the user.
Where it stops holding
If the user last explicitly chose yearly, prefilling yearly on return is memory, not default strategy — it must still be editable, and marked “same as last time.” A paid plan after a trial ends is an expiry event, not a default; confirm it at expiry, do not pre-tick it on the registration form. An admin-forced organisation policy can be an uneditable given for end users, but that is policy push: show the source, do not costume it as “your choice.” Low-consequence convenience defaults (remember this device, local language) are outside the ban, provided turning them off is cheap and findable.
Applying it
- For pay, share, delete, and grant, default to free, minimal share, reversible, not-yet-granted.
- Keep add-ons and upgrades unselected; choosing them must be an affirmative click, not “untick that box.”
- Let submit copy restate the high consequence that will happen; do not let “Continue” carry a preselected annual charge.
- How to check: submit without changing any default, and list charges, permissions, and irreversible acts that will fire. Anything not clicked in this round means the default stood on the wrong side.